Introductory Information 0 A.D. (pronounced 'zero ey-dee') is a free, open-source, cross-platform real-time strategy game of ancient warfare. This is currently an incomplete, under-development version of the game. We're always interested in getting more people involved, to help bring the game towards completion and to share the interesting experience of developing a project of this scope. There are several ways to contact us and find more information: Web site: Forums: Trac (development info, bug tracker): IRC: #0ad on irc.quakenet.org - Running precompiled binaries on Windows - Open the 'binaries system' folder. To launch the game: Run pyrogenesis.exe To launch the map editor: Run Atlas.bat or 'pyrogenesis.exe -editor' - Compiling the game from source code - The instructions for compiling the game on Windows, Linux and OS X are at - Reporting problems - Bugs should be reported on Trac.
• Concurrency arises naturally in an OS when it supports concurrent applications, and because it must interact directly with the hardware. • Hardware interactions also impose timing constraints. CS350 Operating Systems Fall 2007 Intro 4 Schematic View of an Operating System commands data and interrupts Operating System system calls system.
For information on reporting problems and finding logs, see.
Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, is happy to announce the re-release of 0 A.D. Alpha 23 “Ken Wood”, the twenty-third alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source real-time strategy game of ancient warfare. This version is a maintenance release. Blocking bugs were fixed and security and legal issues were addressed. The gameplay remained untouched, and both versions of Alpha 23 are multiplayer-compatible; however we advise you to upgrade to benefit from the following fixes. The team wishes to apologize for the delay in re-releasing.
We have addressed other issues whenever we couldn’t make more progresses on the game itself, so the re-release has not been a completely negative procedure. Easy Download and Install Download and installation instructions are available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. Is free software.
This means you are free to download, redistribute, modify and to the application under the same licenses (GPL v2 or a later version for code and Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 for artwork, see ). Although you might find some people selling copies of 0 A.D., either over the internet or on physical media, you will always have the option to completely gratis, directly from the developers. No “freemium” model, no in-game advertising, no catch. Improvements Multiplayer lobby Major fixes:. Hosting and joining games on the lobby now works reliably on macOS.
Lobby lag and freezes have been fixed. Measures have been taken to prevent lobby denial-of-service attacks. STUN cannot be abused to make clients crash anymore.
Game start times have been improved (by up to 10s) when no AI players are present. This prevents disconnects on game starts. Quality of life:. Lagging players can be reported at game start. Disconnects and quits are better handled during game loading. The “I’m Ready!” status can now be reverted by right-clicking the button. Hosts can no longer start games if some player is not ready.
Auto-completion of chat messages in the game setup has been improved. Network synchronization Out-of-sync (OOS) issues arise when the clients of different players compute the simulation differently. Our OOS debunking work flow has been improved.
Specific OOS issues on game rejoin have been resolved for the Danubius map and for square maps, as well as after double-clicking on the “Start game!” button. Kushites in-game text During the Alpha 23 release, Transifex (our translation platform) had not updated a few resources, resulting in some localized in-game text relating to the Kushites not appearing in the game, despite the hard work of our translators. The missing strings now appear in the game.
GDPR compliance The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect on May 25th, 2018, just as we were releasing Alpha 23. We decided to take the bull by the horns and to continue working on the re-release by making 0 A.D. Compliant and more secure. All the sub-services that collect personal data from you now feature a Privacy Policy and updated Terms of Service and of Use. To continue playing the game, you will have to accept all future modifications of those policies. In a few days, we will release the Privacy Policies of our websites to make them GDPR-compliant as well.
New privacy policies For more information, now and in the future, please see the related wiki page: Security. The lobby server was upgraded to the latest versions of its distribution and software.
The lobby client now supports the TLS cryptographic protocol. Lobby authentication is now required (new feature of A23). Secure HTTPS links are now used wherever possible in the game. Miscellaneous. Lobby buddies are no longer printed in the main application log.
A build issue on Arch Linux has been resolved. Support of biomes in map previews has been fixed. Mod.io status update Alpha 23 saw the launch of, a platform for hosting and sharing mods, which allowed us to build a mod downloader inside 0 A.D.
A few months later, this launch was a massive success! We went over the 10k downloads milestone, and at the time of writing, we are steadily headed towards the 50k one. We warmly thank the modders for their incredible work of making their mods work with A23, and uploading them to mod.io.
It is thanks to them and the players that 0 A.D. Is #1 on the platform!
Don’t hesitate to subscribe there if you want to receive notifications about new mods and secure our place on the platform. Support us The work is still in progress and can use every helping hand. We are looking for programmers, especially those interested in improving our game engine (written in C), and most notably its graphics pipeline. Javascript programmers are also welcome to help develop the game mechanisms. Artists are always needed: in particular good animators and environment artists who could give our terrain textures a boost, and create more eye-candy. You can also help with translating the game in your language at, by, or simply by spreading the word around you.
If you experience a technical problem with the game, please report it at. This is also the first address to visit when you wish to dedicate some of your time to help patching the code.
Got any further questions or suggestions? Discuss them with other players and developers at the or talk with us directly in the. Wildfire Games, the international group of volunteers developing 0 A.D.: Empires Ascendant, is happy to present this monthly development report. If you want to find out more about the development of this open-source, cross-platform real-time strategy game or if you are interested in game development in general, it might provide an interesting read. If you want to be part of this project, we urge you to post your in our forums or just grab a task from our of open tickets and get right to it.
We are currently looking for Gameplay, AI, Sound and Graphics Programmers along with Animators and 3D & texture artists. You prefer to do something else than programming or drawing? Head to our and join our active community! FOSDEM Brussels; 3-4 February Those who’d like to meet members of the development team and are available this weekend, can join us on: “ a free event for software developers to meet, share ideas and collaborate. Every year, thousands of developers of free and open source software from all over the world gather at the event in Brussels“. We’d love to see you there, and maybe grab a beer afterwards! The Team expands!
We are proud to accept temple into the 0 A.D. Programming team! May his commits be many and his whitespaces few (C joke)! Programming Itms, our project lead, has been working on a breakage in Jenkins, a tool that helps us ensure code quality by running tests in order to check the code for warnings, and has looked into goodies for FOSDEM (spoiler). Mimo updated the AI to support the new combined victory conditions, among his ongoing improvements to the AI.
He has improved the performance of GetEntityState by merging it with GetExtendedEntityState (performance improvement when selecting many units), reported some map errors and reviewed temple’s formation patches. Elexis “I like Vectors” has rewritten a lot of old random map generation code that will allow the player to select the biome on random maps. Other features: River maps are rotated arbitrarily, so that players get a truly unique map generation each time. The game now supports uncapturable Gaia fortifications. Bb has committed the new game setup User Interface, providing sufficient space to add more game settings for the foreseeable future, and the combined victory patch. Vladislav reviewed a few patches and returned to working on post-game charts.
Imarok committed a couple of minor GUI fixes. More importantly: he also worked on secure lobby authentication and a mod version test in the lobby (multiplayer). Gallaecio has improved a couple of English strings. S0600204 worked on the template viewer patch. It is a new dialog that can be opened from the selection panel and structure tree and displays statistics and descriptions about the selected unit or building. Temple worked on unit AI with dropsite distances (e.g.
Mill, storehouse) and visibility checks, fixed blinking territory and a couple of things with formations. He also fixed dock placement and updated some patches, which are waiting for a review by other programmers. Now he is turning his attention to the diplomacy color patch, together with Elexis, and balance changes for the next alpha release. Art & Sound LordGood has been working on the building sets. He committed a Ptolemies stable, archery range, workshop & elephant stable and a Roman stable & workshop.
Stan has done some crash reporting and tried to reproduce call stacks, has worked on fixing the soundmanager bug that has been here since r9055 and has committed templates for new heroes. On the art side: he created many new helmets and caps. Alexandermb, a skillful new artist, has been very active. He has had his new models for horses and spears committed, aside other art improvements like giving siege weapons engineers. Omri Lahav, our composer, has not been idle in January. So much so that we’ll dedicate a separate development blog to his work of late!
Community Contributions Dunedan and fpre‘s efforts to help with alpha 23 GUI and lobby patches, both coding and reviewing are greatly appreciated by the team! Lion.Kanzen recorded new sounds for the archery range.
HannibalBarca has uploaded a beautiful winter river map. Wowgetoffyourcellphone contributed new icons for dogs and for cavalry. Bigtiger created a beautiful skirmish map: Via Augusta. Leyto created a Muskox texture, that was committed to the game. Wildfire Games, the international group of volunteers developing 0 A.D.: Empires Ascendant, is happy to present this monthly development report. If you want to find out more about the development of this open-source, cross-platform real-time strategy game or if you are interested in game development in general, it might provide an interesting read. If you want to be part of this project, we urge you to post your in our forums or just grab a task from our of open tickets and get right to it.
We are currently looking for Gameplay, AI, Sound and Graphics Programmers along with Animators and 3D & texture artists. You prefer to do something else than programming or drawing Head to our and join our active community! 2017 Indie of the Year Awards We made it to the final 100! Now we need your once more!
Support the team and community by voting your-favourite-historical-real-time-strategy-game in-the-making to the top! The list of planned features is dwindling, and with the extra attention a prize brings, new contributors flock to our forums. Programming Itms, our project lead, worked on the build system with the update to premake5 and added VS 2015 support. Now he is showing SpiderMonkey some love All on top of managing and directing the efforts of the team! Mimo, our AI programmer, cleaned a lot of legacy code, as the first AI prototype was added many many alpha versions ago.
He also removed the old tutorial AI and improved mod support. Elexis has refactored the majority of the random map generator code, making it easier than ever before to create of new random map script, implemented tab controls for the options page and reviewed many patches by external contributors. The engine code become more fail-safe (by marking simulation states as read-only), simple (only one way to access JSON data globally) and versatile (implementing it in JavaScript instead of C). Bb has been busy coding the prerequisites for secondary attacks. Imagine your legionarii throwing their pila before drawing their gladii (just dropping some Latin like it’s hot). He also worked on combining victory conditions (so one can play regicide + wonder victory for instance) and has been cleaning up templates for readability (among his work on the template viewer).
He is also working on an updated user interface for the game setup, with more space for the options, so more can be added in the future. Vladislav has written some validation scripts and has had some experiments with Atlas and cinematics.
Fatherbushido has mostly worked on the attack component, both his own code and reviews of features like the destruction damage (for instance fire ships exploding upon destruction) by others. Wraitii has finished some of the pre-requirements of the unit motion rewrite (more fluid movements of units) and rebased the single player campaign patch, laying the groundwork for campaigns to be added in the future.
Imarok has worked on the mouse wheel batch size (a feature that allows the player to specify the number of units to train by scrolling the mousewheel) and an anti-impersonation lobby patch, which further secures multiplayer lobby authentication. S0600204 and FeXoR have finished the patch that would make the random map generator wall-placer civ-agnostic. Leper has been auditing patches by other programmers, which is a crucial yet tedious task. As usual, community members played a key role in our open source development process!
Sandarac has implemented an attack range visualization that lets you preview the attack capabilities before placing the buildings. Fpre contributed a number of enrichments to the multiplayer user interface.
Last but not least, temple has helped tremendously with a lot of patches and reviews! His contributions on an issue with the pathfinder, which was the cause of additional lag, were crucial! Art & Sound LordGood and Stan have been working on new graphics for stables, workshops and archery ranges.
Stan also committed a patch by Alexandermb which added animations for siege engines. Ever wondered how a zebu would fall lifeless to the ground? Programmers call this ZEBU DEATH ANIM, tells you something about them, right?
Well, Stan has been struggling with his animation for quite some time. We’d love to send him on a quick round trip to a wildlife park in Africa but our budget only stretches so far after all: we’re free-to-play. Stan also worked on the visual move order indicator. Omri Lahav, our ever talented composer-arranger-musician, has been working on another music track, and has acquired vocal recordings to enhance a current track! Head over to the 0 A.D. Page and check out the 33 (so far!) original recordings for this project.
Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, proudly announces the release of 0 A.D. Alpha 22 “Venustas”, the twenty-second alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source real-time strategy game of ancient warfare. Easy Download and Install Download and installation instructions are available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Is free of charge and always will be. Although you might find some people selling copies of 0 A.D., either over the internet or on physical media, you will always have the option to completely gratis, directly from the developers. Moreover, you can redistribute the game and modify it freely as long as you abide by the GPL.
You can even use parts of the art and sound for your own projects as long as you abide by CC BY-SA. No “freemium” model, no in-game advertising, no catch.
Top New Features. Remake of many models, animations and textures, two new music tracks.
Configuration-free Multiplayer Hosting. Capture the Relic Gamemode. Aura and Heal Range Visualization. Twelve new maps, including scripted enemies, rising water and a tutorial. Espionage Technology, Team Bonuses and Hero Auras. Petra AI Diplomacy and Attack Strategies.
Summary Screen Graphs. Cinema Path Editing. Buddy System A complete list of user-relevant changes can be found in the changelog at. Capture the Relic Mode A relic is a wagon that holds the sacred remains of a great leader. Like to have your armies boosted or construct buildings with a discount? Venture into the unknown and secure these priceless items before they fall into the hands of the enemy! The team that manages to keep all relics for a manually set amount of time wins the match.
Spartans guarding a captured relic A Catafalque captured by three enemies New Graphics Hundreds of models, animations and textures were handcrafted to replace the lower quality art. Together with the improved icons and new main menu backgrounds, both new and experienced players can (re)discover 0 A.D. Damage Variants and Scaffolding present (only) Carthaginian buildings in new variety: Scaffolding at construction sites The new unit models bring both visual and gameplay balancing improvements. Here we present the never-seen-before Ptolemian Infantry Champion Pikeman: New Ptolemian Infantry Champion Pikeman New Music The original soundtrack was extended by the songs “ Tale of Warriors” and “ Sunrise“. You can hear the former in the trailer. Listen to or download the entire 0 A.D.
Soundtrack at:. Lossless quality versions can be found at.
Configuration-Free Multiplayer Hosting This release of 0 A.D. Brings hosting multiplayer matches to the mass of players. It features a new option that enables most players to start a match without any prior internet router configuration. STUN option when hosting a lobby match Aura and Heal Range Visualization Mauryan Hero Healer Chanakya Finally players can judge the effect range of aura bonuses and healing abilities of their fighters and supporters. A solid line indicates an aura, while the plus-symbols indicate the heal radius.
New Maps Players of the new release will be able to enjoy the game in twelve new worlds! New Tutorial A new tutorial, that can be started from the “Learn to Play” option in the main menu, was put in place to help beginners find their way into the game mechanics. New Economic Walkthrough New Scripted Maps Three new maps come with scripted events that shape the story of each match.
On Danubius, teams are separated by the Danube river, which is defended by reoccurring Gallic ships that focus the players fleet and land invasion forces. Each side of the river comes with a Gallic stronghold that spawns attackers until it is wiped out by the players. Danubius On Extinct Volcano, players have about twenty minutes to rush their enemies until the water starts to rise. Attacks and marches will become risky as the water level can rise suddenly anytime. Units below the sea level will drown and buildings become unusable, so you better get the ships ready to evacuate! Extinct Volcano On Polar Sea, there is virtually no vegetation, so players have to use their initial wood treasures and market wisely. Wolf packs reappear from time to time and look for meat.
Any kind of meat! Polar Sea Notice that these maps have not been optimized for computer players. New Regular Maps Wild Lake Corinthian Isthmus (4) African Plains River Archipelago India Arctic Summer The Botswanan Haven and Cinema Demo map are not depicted here.
To live up to its title, the unique “Survival of the Fittest” map was reworked to spawn heroes, some never-seen units and to become exponentially more difficult in later stages of the game. Espionage Technology After having researched the Espionage technology, players are able to bribe a random trader of a selected enemy, letting it share its vision and thus supply potentially invaluable insights into the enemy’s home base. The diplomacy dialog is used to select an enemy and initiate the conspiracy. Team Bonuses Each alliance between players now confers bonuses upon the allies, depending entirely on their choice of civilizations.
For example, if you choose to be an ally of the Macedonians civilization, you get 20% more sales when bartering resources at the market. The exact team bonuses can be found in the History section of the “Learn to Play” menu and in the changelog at. Hero Auras Many heroes’ auras were added and rebalanced that require players to decide more wisely which leader to announce. Wish to see what our “Swag” aura can do? Play Iberians and have a great experience discovering new additions at every corner! The details are revealed in the Structure Tree of the game and in the changelog at.
Petra Diplomacy and Attack Strategies Like to play single-player games with bots? The AI bot, Petra, became much smarter this release. It can strategically plan attack and defense strategies depending on the different types of victory conditions (Conquest, Regicide, Capture the Relic, Wonder Victory).
It also fully takes capturing into consideration. The economy of the AI was improved as well. Petra now avoids establishing trade routes that cross enemy territory and researches economic technologies sooner. Find a complete list of changes at. Team Notifications To improve the cooperation between players, chat notifications have been added that inform allies of tributed resources and researched phases. Summary Screen Graphics The chronology of all military and economic game statistics is now visualized in the summary screen. Track your and your team’s progress throughout the game on a graph and derive factors that decided the winner of the game.
Summary Graphs Buddy System Keep up with your friends and locate them in-game with this feature. As a host, you can optionally prefer buddies to become players in the match setup and allow only buddies to join running games as observers. Cinema Path Editing With Alpha 22, our map editor Atlas has received new controls to create and edit cinematic camera paths (like the ones seen in the release trailer). Try the Cinema Demo scenario map in the game and in the Atlas to see an example.
Consult the Atlas manual for further instructions:. Cinema Path Editor Under the Hood Creating a custom mod of 0 A.D. Has become easier. Hobby developers can now add new resource types and match options with a few keystrokes or debug AI matches by simulating many games in a row. The Windows and macOS helper libraries have been updated to resolve security issues.
Several ways to cheat in multiplayer games were plugged. If you couldn’t play the game before due to a crash, try this release! Make sure to checkout the options page and, since new entries were added there as well.
Why “Venustas”? “Venustas” is latin for “attractiveness” and was picked to match both the foremost feature of the release (the new models and animations) and the release numbering (V being the twenty second letter in the alphabet). This time we will not ask the community to find a name for the next release, Alpha 23. We have decided that we will name it after Ken Wood, one of the founders, who in 2006. Support Us The work is still in progress and can use every helping hand. You can support us by translating the game into your language on, contributing art or code or simply. If you experience a technical problem with the game, please report it at.
This is also the first address to visit when you wish to dedicate some of your time to help patching the code. Got any further questions or suggestions? Discuss them with other players and developers at the or talk with us directly over. Subscribe to 0 A.D. Development News. Dear members of the community, it’s been half a year since I took the lead of 0 A.D. (time flies so fast!) and I would like to give you some news of the team and tell you what we’ve been up to.
Programming We faced big issues in the programming area during 2016. The game is more and more complete, and, as a consequence, more and more complex to maintain. With each new feature come new bugs, and we must be very careful as it is easy to create regressions, i.e.
Bugs that were fixed but reappear due to another change. The number of things to keep in mind when we change parts of the code also increased drastically over time. There are several ways to address this, and we decided on a new programming workflow, in which all our patches are reviewed to avoid oversights. On top of preventing a lot of mistakes, the mood has improved as we have clear and, it seems, efficient, rules. The review process mainly happens on. It is integrated with a set of automated tools that help us automatically catch mistakes (with linting) and prevent regressions (with unit tests). Some of those systems have just been set up and we hope we can tweak them over time to continue increasing our efficiency.
In the near future, we will look into using our AI to automatically test the game. This new workflow also proved helpful to handle the stream of patches from occasional contributors.
Some of the contributions were especially welcome and we are happy to have a working review process again, otherwise we would have lost the great work. We are looking forward to welcoming some of the contributors in the team when they are ready. Speaking of which, we are delighted to highlight the arrival of s0600204 in the team! S0600204 made a lot of important contributions throughout the years and the team was unanimous in proposing him to join us, which happened a few weeks ago. Art The artistic team didn’t rest on their laurels either. As you already know, the new unit meshes, along with brand new animations, are now in the game!
The cavalry units are still missing but they are being prepared and you can expect news in the near future. We also started working on new icons for a variety of units, structures and technologies, and you can already see a lot of them in the development version of the game. The new units are a great milestone in the development of the game and we already have plans for the future and possible areas of improvement. We’ll keep you updated! Acknowledging our design issues Despite all those great news, a few of you have rightfully expressed their disappointment about our need for a better gameplay design. The original vision of 0 A.D.
Founders is, naturally, not easy to follow when the project has accumulated more than a decade of various contributions. We received interesting gameplay proposals from dedicated members of the community but none of them met the unanimous enthusiasm of the team, which led to more frustration for both sides This is the topic on which we will focus our team discussions now. The ultimate goal is having a modern game design document that revives the original goal of the founders while properly allowing people to contribute to it.
Nothing is decided yet, but rest assured that we are taking the issue seriously, even if it takes us time to reach a decision. A new release is near! Our next announcement should be the release of a new Alpha version, which is exciting. I’m not going to detail its content, but you are encouraged to test the development version, and help us catch some bugs before we start packaging it.
Last minute additions may or may not happen, depending on the nastiness of the bugs that might delay the release, the weather, or the astral conjunction Just stay tuned! Thanks for your support, your enthusiasm, and for being the best community we could dream of.
In the interest of transparency, the Wildfire Games team would like to report on the finances of the project as of 2017-03-31. Until 2016-12, 0 A.D. Had funds in three places:. Funds earmarked for the project and held in trust by US-based non-profit organization Software in the Public Interest, Inc. (hereafter “SPI”);.
A PayPal account under the name of former project leader, Jason Bishop (Wijitmaker). This account was a legacy of the time before we became affiliated with SPI;. An account on Flattr, a Sweden-based microdonation provider. SPI Earmark for 0 A.D. As of 2017-01-01, the 0 A.D. Earmark is USD 29,528.35 (Source: ).
Other Accounts In our “legacy” PayPal account, we had USD 366.30 on 2016-11-30. This sum was consolidated with the SPI earmark in 2016-12 and is probably reflected in the account balance mentioned above. ( Edit 2018-09-08: The sum was.) We will not be using this account anymore and we have duly removed the references to it from the donation page. On Flattr, we have EUR 842.14 available, which are approximately USD 900. We have removed the references to Flattr account from the donation page and we intend to consolidate these funds with the SPI earmark in the near future.
Total In total, we have approximately 30,428.35 USD. Concluding Remarks The 0 A.D.
Project finances are managed by the Treasury Committee: Erik (“feneur”), Adarash (“MishFTW”) and Aviv (“Jeru”). We welcome your comments and suggestions on the.
Has a new Project Leader, was presented at an event in Toulouse, and is well on its way to have the new unit models implemented. New Project Leader Our previous Project Leader Erik ‘Feneur’ Johansson has decided to step down, but will remain on the team and still help out with administrative tasks. Nicolas ‘Itms’ Auvray will take over the responsibilities as Project Leader for 0 A.D. And lead the team to Beta and beyond.
Here are a few words on how he sees the future of the project: I am deeply honored to become the new Project Leader after Erik, who has been an incredible source of motivation since I started to contribute to 0 A.D. As a programmer of the game, you should expect my first objectives to be related to the technical side of things.
I would like to improve the environment of the programming team, in order to make the development less difficult and stressful; and I also plan to focus my programming activity on the libraries we use, and on communicating with the teams who create those. If we improve that environment, we can recruit new people and have more workforce to push the game towards Beta.
However, I also want to be an actual leader for the project and its community as a whole, so feel free to contact me if you think something is needed in some area. I will be far more active in the forums and I’m eager to discuss with you all! Finally, I would like to thank everyone for being part of such a great community. The game would be nowhere near its current state without you, and we can accomplish even more great things together! At Capitole du Libre The 19-20th of November, Itms went to the event in Toulouse, France, to showcase 0 A.D.
And give talks. If by any chance you were there too, thanks for participating in this very cool event! Is already quite renowned in the FLOSS community, but a number of visitors discovered the game for the first time and were greatly impressed. The game, while still in development, is already suitable for a general audience. Itms could give a talk about the game and how Wildfire Games develops it, and also conducted a workshop where players could install 0 A.D. Alpha 21 on their machine and enjoy a game together. Everybody had a lot of fun!
Itms also met 0 A.D. Enthusiasts, including older ones. The image below shows Alpha 4 and Alpha 21 meeting each other: If you are yourself a 0 A.D. Enthusiast, don’t forget to spread the word around you, so the game attracts more players and reaches new heights. Plenty of New Unit Animations on the Way Our Art Lead Enrique has been busy, both in real life and working on 0 A.D. In real life he got married, congratulations Enrique.
Working on 0 A.D. He has created 90 animations for the new unit meshes which brings them a lot closer to being finished.
You can watch several of them in the video below. He has also created the Seleucid Champion Elephant: Our other artist Johnathan (aka LordGood) has also been busy and has among other things created two new main menu backgrounds, construction models for a couple buildings, some new animations, and several more things. Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, proudly announces the release of 0 A.D. Alpha 21 “Ulysses”, the twenty-first alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source game of ancient warfare. This alpha features new game modes, plenty of new maps, the official introduction of the final civilization: The Seleucid Empire and more! Easy Download and Install Download and installation instructions are available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.
Is free of charge and always will be. Although you might find some people selling copies of 0 A.D., either over the internet or on physical media, you will always have the option to completely gratis, directly from the developers. Moreover, you can redistribute the game and modify it freely as long as you abide by the GPL. You can even use parts of the art and sound for your own projects as long as you abide by CC BY-SA. No “freemium” model, no in-game advertising, no catch. Top New Gameplay Features In This Release. Herocide/Regicide: You start with a hero and are defeated when he or she dies.
Wonder Victory: Now you can change the time from when the wonder is built to when you win. Either set it to 0 so you win as soon as the wonder is built or to anywhere between 1 and 120 minutes for a chance for the opponents to destroy it before the match is won. Last Man Standing: Only one player can win the game. Form temporary alliances to eliminate common competitors.
But be careful: as the remaining players struggle for victory, allies are forced to turn against you. This mode can be played with every victory condition.
New buildings and champions. The Persian Hall and Hellenic Royal Stoa can train new Infantry Champions in town and city phase. The Briton Crannog acts as a civic center and dock, providing economic stability on both land and water. Romans and Persians benefit from the new Temple of Vesta and Gate of Ishtar, making buildings harder to capture. The Temple of Vesta, Thracian Black Cloak Champions and the Crannog.
Patrolling: When clicking the button or pressing the hotkey (P + Right Click), units move along the path you set for them and attack enemy units they encounter along the way, then return to the beginning and continue doing so until you give them another order. Tech Cost Modifiers and Team Bonuses: The costs of technologies can now be modified by Auras and Technologies, demonstrated by faster and cheaper research when a Library was built.
Players get a bonus if they are on a team with a player of a certain civilization. For example allies of Iberians have 20% cheaper skirmishers, allies of Seleucids have 20% cheaper civic centers. Stackable Auras: Capturing further Wonders, Libraries or Theatrons increases the building bonus proportionally. Losing a wonder means losing the population bonus, capturing a wonder means further increasing the maximum population, making the Wonder a crucial part of the empire. New Balancing: The aim of the new balancing is to stop players from destroying buildings with infantry and cavalry, enforce the use of siege engines, reduce the spamming of champions by making them more expensive and slower to train. With the addition of town phase champions and the lessening of attack damage of defensive buildings, early attacks are more feasible. Capturing of buildings is only feasible if they are heavily damaged or left unguarded.
More details are found in the section of the changelog. Upgrading System: Buildings and units can now be upgraded. For example the new Sentry Towers can be upgraded to Defense Towers. Sentry Towers New Maps Alpha 21 adds no less than eleven random map scripts and two skirmish maps. Nine of these random maps teleport players to actual geographical regions: Amazon, Mediterranean, Red Sea, Marmara, Pompeii, Bahrain, Howe Sound, Ngorongoro and Rouen.
The Mediterranean Rouen Red Sea Howe Sound On the random map Caledonian Meadows, wide grasslands, deep forests and seas lie between opposing teams which are yet connected by paths. The map demonstrates realistic terrain generation, distributing resources by height.
Caledonian Meadows The Skirmish map Dueling Cliffs uses the new height limit, that was introduced in Alpha 19: Dueling Cliffs New Models The Seleucid faction was completed by adding the models for the Colonnade, Barracks, Wonder, Market, Corral, Blacksmith, Dock, Library, Military Colony and City Walls. Seleucid buildings (from the top left): Walls, Wonder, Market, Military Colony, Blacksmith, Corral, Library, and the Dock New Fields and Oak trees beautify the landscape. The Gaul Fortress, Tavern and the Ptolemaic Military Colony received new models as well. New fields, the Gaul Fortress, taverns on the left and right, and Sentry Towers, Defense Towers, and the new oak trees in the background. The Seleucid Market We have a new team member: Niek, known as niektb. He is new to the team, but not new to the project as he has been part of the community for several years.
During that time he has gotten to know the project and has contributed both art, some code and maps, and most importantly he is an important part of the modding community. And that will hopefully continue, which means he can be a useful link between the main game development and the mod development. We hope that his journey will serve as inspiration for others, being a part of a modding team is a great learning experience. Several buildings which have previously just been available in the editor are now possible to use in normal gameplay. They range from the Briton’s Crannog which is both a Civic Center and a dock, to the Persian Ishtar Gate, which increase the resistance to being captured for nearby buildings. More accurate experience Citizen Soldiers now gain experience (XP) per every hit they do rather than just when they kill another unit.
This means that experience is more evenly distributed between the units. Previously one soldier might have dealt almost all the damage but another could still have gotten the XP just because it was the last soldier to hit the enemy before it died. New animations Our Art Lead, Enrique, has been busy for the new unit models. Chopping wood with a shield on the back There are still a lot of animations to create, so it is not likely that we will start to use the new models for a while yet. Every new animation created brings that day closer though, so it’s certainly encouraging to have more of them done. Fixes and improvements Sander (sanderd17) and Lancelot (wraitii) have changed the game engine so the simulation can set actor variants.
This should allow things like showing damage on units and buildings, or defining winter maps that load actors with snowy textures as opposed to normal snow-free textures. The engine part is more or less done, but it will take a lot of work by artists before it will be visible in the game. New balancing of champions and siege changes the gameplay to make siege engines more important, as buildings can’t be destroyed effectively by champions any more.
The timeout for the wonder victory can be set arbitrarily, previously it was set to 10 minutes, but now you can set it to anything from 1 minute to 120 minutes. Apart from that there has been work done on technologies and civilization bonuses, the in-game menus and more. For an in-depth list see the on our which is updated regularly as new features are added to the development version.
Omri has released a personal album And some news from our composer Omri Lahav: He has been busy creating his first personal album, which you can check out at his Bandcamp page: Dust by Omri Lahav We highly recommend you check it out. He has also just moved to the U.S. So he will most likely not have time to create music for 0 A.D. For a little while yet. He has mentioned that he’s starting to get inspired though, so hopefully it will not take too long.
As a final note: We have disabled the contact form on the as we haven’t received any emails from it for a while and have been unable to find the cause. You can of course still contact us in all the other ways: via the, and the email address listed on the. If you have sent a message to us via the contact form and not received a reply, please contact us in another way as we have most likely not seen it.